CAIRO - For many years under the former regime, Egypt suffered from a culture of corruption and the absence of bodies for monitoring State land. This abuse is very serious, amounting to theft on a huge scale. Some 500 investors bought 4.5 million acres for reclamation, only paying peanuts for the land. But the investors exploited it for their own ends. The Egyptian Mail this week investigates the reasons why this land is being misused and offers possible solutions as well. Agricultural land encroachments in Egypt are on the increase, because of the absence of strict law enforcement on the violators, who find that the current law is not a threat, since corruption became so ingrained under ex-president Hosni Mubarak. Such encroachments have been happening for many years. Often the landowners are to blame, while the Government has crucially ignored the problem. "We lose about 30,000 acres of agricultural land annually, which is a scary, given that the total area was originally 9 million acres. The concerned bodies have allowed much of this land to become barren," says Abdel-Ghani el-Gendi, a professor in the Faculty of Agriculture, Ain Shams University. "The problem also lies in cases of land encroachments by MPs in the dismantled People's Assembly, who got their hands on land or allowed other violators to do so, in their own interests. "What makes it worse is that farmers build on their land instead of cultivating it, especially in the absence of governmental supervision.” Some agricultural land is already being exploited by the Government, so it's doubtful that it will do anything about this corruption, according to lawyers. Mohamed Hassan, a lawyer, told the Egyptian Mail that building on agriculture land will never end, because the population keeps on growing and there is no other land available for building on. According to statistics, 99 per cent of the population live on about 5.5 per cent of Egypt's landmass. Last year, Egypt's population stood at 84.5 million, up from 27.8 million in 1960. Much of the population lives near the banks of the Nile River, where arable land is found, while the Sahara Desert is sparsely inhabited. Hassan added that, according to Law 53 of 1966, anyone who destroys agricultural land will be fined between LE500 and LE1,000 per feddan. Anyone who builds illegally on such land will be fined between LE1,000 and LE5,000 per feddan, while the illegal structure will be demolished. Councillor Moataz Sadeq, the head of the Criminal Court, says that the Egyptian Law on Land Encroachment doesn't need amending, but it needs to be enforced immediately. He explained that rulings against the violators take a long time, maybe one or two years, making enforcement terribly slow, which means violators and the families who own the land blithely continue building on it. “After the revolution, decision-makers must realise that corruption will only stop, if the law is implied,” Sadeq told this newspaper, suggesting that the State should resolve the problem by making people build new homes in the desert. Meanwhile, in a bid to solve the problem, the Government, a few years ago, launched the Ebny Beitak (Build Your Own Home) project, according to which young lower and middle-class people were offered land to build on at affordable prices. But corruption and a culture of bribes thwarted the project. Greedy businessmen got their hands on the land and sold it later for an enormous profit. Sadeq said that, for such a project to be successful, the regulatory bodies must ensure that the land only goes to the truly deserving. Flagship communities Some of real-estate companies are flagship communities for the rich, built on cheap or even free State-owned land. An HSBC report published in early 2010 strongly urged investors to buy these companies' shares, giving the company a very good rating, describing it as an "inexpensive and diversified land bank". The report, entitled ‘Picking Winners in the Egyptian Real Estate Sector', highlighted how these real-estate companies badly exploited public lands for their interests. “Why is the Government offering tycoons our lands so cheaply, so they can triple their wealth?" asks Khaled Ali, a labour lawyer and head of the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights. "Selling State land is nonsense.” According to HSBC, one of the real-estate companies bought land at a very low cost, an average of LE155 per square metre, all its products are oriented to the richest 12 per cent of the population, with a minimum price of LE1.2-1.5 million per unit. "The only public housing project, Ebny Beitak, launched by Mubarak, has a total land bank of just 12 million square metres, less than a quarter of that of the Madinaty luxury housing project," adds Ali. A former governor, speaking on condition of anonymity, says that the current law is sufficient to punish violators and stop the illegal encroachments, but the problem lies in its enforcement by the administrative authorities, which are open to bribery. “For the law to be enforced, the Government must set up a police bureau, perhaps called the Encroachment Police, rather like the Tourism Police or the Electricity Police,” he stresses. ($1 = LE6.00)
